Hello to tweets,

Here in west Olympia, we are working on about a total of 22-24 inches
of snow. In this snowy weather, my spouse Glen & I have been watching with
great interest how the birds make a living. We've tossed out black oil
sunflower seed and coarse cornmeal ( a great trick, as it feeds the dickey birds, but
squirrels, jays & crows like bigger corn bits, so they ignore it). So like
many of you, we're getting good views of the yard birds feeding on what we've
provided.

Our yard also has a perimeter of mostly native shrubs, and the birds
have really been working these. So snowberries have been stripped, and Glen
saw several birds feeding off the buds of the cherry tree- they are still
tightly furled, but must still have some good nutrition. The ocean spray dried
flower heads have also been a hit, as are the dried seed pods on the mock orange
and lilacs. Our neighbors also noticed birds stripping seeds out of their
lavender bushes/dried stalks as well.

What we've noticed is that many of the mostly ground -feeding birds -
juncos, siskins, GC sparrows, etc. are forced to look up. Instead of gleaning
seeds from the ground, they prove themselves very capable of working along
the branches of bushes, finding and stripping out the dried seed pods, getting
their daily bread in this way.

It's also interesting that though there is plenty of the food we've
provided, they are still looking at other sources, eating from a wide range of
plants.
All these things are a lesson in the resilience of our backyard birds.


Janet Partlow & Glen Buschmann
Olympia


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